Thursday, 16 February 2012

Some Flooring ideas

Jason was complaining that he didn’t want the whole house to
be laminate. Which I both understand and find funny…since we don’t have any
laminate in the house yet! We're doing cork in the kitchen,

and an engineered hardwood in the dining room.

The bathroom is going to have tile and the bedrooms also will be having some sort of hardwood layed in them
when we get around to it (whatever we can get for a good deal from another
auction). He was suggesting vinyl. Which, wasn’t really ok with me, because all
I could think of was ugly, tacky, roll out “mats”. I know that there are other
options, that they’ve come a long way with vinyl, because I’ve seen them use
some tiles and other, better looking things on all those home improvement
shows. So I went in search of those, not the ugly things that I saw in Rona, or
the Depot. I came across a site for Karndean International that have a TON of
vinyl tile options that are actually, well, appealing!
They don’t make me want to run the other way, like those sheets waiting on the
rolls in the stores.

I was excited. They
were able to allow Jason and I to compromise, he liked the durability of the
vinyl, and I liked all their options and the fact that they didn’t really look
like vinyl. The best part is you can order samples…FREE…and a catalogue, and
you receive it within a week. I ordered a dark sample, with the living room in
mind, and then just a random one. I really love the dark one, it’s exactly what
I was thinking of for the living room…super dark, with subtle wood tones, it
actually looks like it could be real wood. They’re a “tile”, or basically a
“plank” like a piece of hardwood, which just makes them look even more like
real wood.

So I love it, I’m a
convert to the dark side of vinyl! I was pumped to show Jason we can have a good
looking, durable, non-laminate option for the living room. I ask him if he
likes it:

Jason: “Yeah,
sure.”

Me: UGH! Seriously?! Yeah sure?! “So you
don’t really like it then?”

Jason: “Well, not
really.”

Me: of course you don’t, because I finally like
something that’s vinyl. “I think it looks really natural, it’s got the wood
tones, and veins running through it, it’s pretty much exactly what I was
thinking of for the living room.

This is where I had to stop talking, because I was afraid I
would say something that would spark an argument, because now he was just being
ridiculous. Tile? Seriously, who puts tile in a living room haha? We went
through a house that had tile in the living room, and he made fun of it more
than I did! We’ve revisited it a few times, since that initial conversation,
and he’s slowly starting to come around…I just keep reminding him that the
vinyl was his idea, and I like it.

Now the conversations
are leaning more towards whether we’re going to take the vinyl all the way into
the entryway, or if we’re going to do tile in the entryway – like (these) penny
rounds. I love pennyrounds, and like the look of them on the floor in an entry
way, but because our entry is going to be more open to the living room (divided
only by a short, half wall) it seems more logical to extend the vinyl all the
way out. (You know, because it’s so durable that people often put it in an
entryway to begin with) As much as I love and want the black pennyrounds, I
think it’s a better choice to just extend the vinyl, it makes it seems more
seamless, and we won’t have to have that awkward seam hump. So it looks like
we’ll be going with the lovely dark vinyl from Karndean International, unless
we find something similar at an auction for cheaper.